Source
r/ffxiv•
Eliroo

Dancer Write-Up (Not really a guide)

[Theorycraft]

Hello Reddit!

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I've been toiling pretty hard over DNC for the past two months now. I spent a good amount of time learning python and then producing a simulation of sorts to test both openers and logical priority choices. I've also spent some time creating spreadsheets, identifying the few complexities that DNC has and working with simulators / spreadsheets / mathcrafters of other jobs to figure how a DNC effects their DPS.

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It, of course, hasn't been just me working on things and I've had several help from Mentors in the Balance and other really active members.

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Anyway I wrote this unnecessarily long document to better explain the methodology behind playing DNC : Here is the link!

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Just a few minor notes:

  • Esprit rates aren't final. Actually if you want to help make them final check out this post:

Help me figure out Esprit rates!

  • Any data collected from other jobs and how DNC buffs effect them are assuming near perfect play, I highlight this heavily in that section but I want to highlight it even more. The reality of playing with similarly skilled people is very slim. Also some data may be updated as other jobs discover new rotations, ect.
  • Lastly, this could change with 5.05 and I will do my best to update it as quickly as possible, so I recommend checking it again a few days after 5.05!

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Also, if you feel I made any errors, feel free to DM me here or on Discord and we can talk it out and I can maybe even test it to see how it works out.

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You can also easily find myself and other people who are willing to help you better play DNC at the balance discord: https://discord.gg/thebalanceffxiv

Posted Jul 19, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

17644
EcoleBuissonniereCelestially Opposed•

Your not-a-guide is unironically one of the better Balance guides I've read. Really great stuff.

36
SapphicStarEsselte Lhian on Midgardsormr•

Please read the document yall, but here's a simplified tldr version for people who wouldn't read it anyway:

Who should I pick as my dance partner?

Whoever does the most damage. In some dungeons this is the whm, so get a parser if you're on PC.

When you don't have data on that (ie. first pull of a DF or pug group), priority is generally sam > mnk > other melee > casters > ranged.

When should I use my procs?

During raid buffs, ideally. Use up any surplus so you don't lose any procs, but you want to go into buff windows with full fans and esprit when possible.

There's a window every 2m with your own buffs if nothing else, but a ninja in the party will give you a smaller one every 60s. Since the buff windows line up with your 60s Flourish CD, you should actually just use your basic 3/4 procs immediately, since Flourish will light them all up anyway.

What are my stat priorities?

Not covered in this document.

What's my opener?

Prepull: Standard at 15s, do the steps. Prepot at 2s, finish dance at 0s. Use sprint to be in range if necessary.

Then Technical (oGCD Flourish) -> Rising Windmill (oGCD Devilment) -> spam procs and saber dance as available.

If there is a nin in your party, wait another GCD after devilment before using your fans or saber dance, to better line them up with trick attack.

If you are partnered with a drg or nin, maybe use Devilment before starting technical. The normal opener doesn't lose much in comparison though, and it doesn't depend on your partner using the correct meta opener for their job.

Devilment before or after Technical?

After. The only exception is for drg/nin during the opener as described above.

Is it worth delaying my GCD to use dances the instant they come off cooldown?

Depends on how much skill speed you have. Check the document for exact numbers, but basically at low sks you should delay your GCD, and at high sks you should delay the dances. Delaying the dance will slowly misalign your buffs with the rest of the raid though, so for long fights it may be worth it to keep in sync anyway.

Is it worth changing dance partners mid-fight?

Not really. Maybe if your best two options are a blm and a nin, since nin has better burst and blm has better sustain. Generally no, though.

When should I use Improvisation?

During downtime, when everyone is stacked. There are edge cases where it might be worth it to get a single tick inbetween GCDs, but they're very situational.

17
ElirooOPDPS•

Awesome thanks for this! It's a great tl;dr!

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If you read this tl;dr and don't want to read the whole guide at least look at the GCD priorities in and out technical windows as I think they are the most important thing to understand.

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Stats weren't covered in this document because we just don't have an idea about how gear and stats will play into DNC just yet. We know that Crit and DH are the best stats and that SKS is generally the worst but how we handle stats has a lot to do with the gear available to us.

8
rasalhageBLM•

Just recently started the class. What puts casters so low?

1
ElirooOPDPS•

Its mostly because of how they interact with Devilment windows. BLM is just a smooth flow of consistent damage with minor spikes, while SAM is very burst and on the 120s packs a lot of potency into a small amout of time, same can be said for NIN.

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I think in an optimal environment with a BLM you would practice switching between a bursty DPS and the BLM in between devilment windows.

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Esprit rates play a minor role in this equation.

2
SapphicStarEsselte Lhian on Midgardsormr•

I'm not the author, but from the document: it's based on running sims with the different partners. So if everyone in your raid is equally skilled (which never happens) and everyone executes their rotations perfectly according to the current meta (which never happens) and you're fighting a target dummy with no mechanics (which never happens), that's just how the numbers shake out.

Also, the casters aren't "so low" exactly; BLM in particular is effectively equal to NIN in the overall rankings here, and is expected to go up a little once there's a more accurate model for them. SMN is a good bit further behind though.

But the short story is there are three factors that contribute to how good a partner is:

  • All damage outside the 20s of your technical finish gains 5% from Closed Position
  • 2 minute burst DPS gains 20% crit+dhit from Devilment
  • Jobs that execute more GCD actions per minute generate more esprit for you, which adds DPS via Saber Dance.

The document doesn't go into reasoning about why exactly the different jobs land where they do, but the numbers do have certain implications. I can take a guess at it:

BLM has the second-highest APM (after ninja), so they mostly suffer because their main throughput CDs -- Ley Lines and Manafont -- are on a 90s/3m cycle and so generally aren't aligned with your 2m buffs. Sharpcast and swift/triplecast are on a 60s cooldown and do add a little throughput, but mostly provide mobility and consistency to the rotation. I don't think the sims include it, but BLM also suffers the most from not knowing the fight and being forced to move unexpectedly; this costs them both pure damage and reduces their APM. (Pour one out for the BLM mains who walked blindly into E4N this week.)

I don't play SMN myself, but I hear they're also on a 3m rotation this expansion. They also have the absolute worst APM of any dps job, so the only thing keeping them above BRD/MCH is the fact that their overall DPS isn't bard-tier.

RDM meanwhile just hasn't been simulated yet:

Note - I am still waiting on information from the people working on the RDM tools. I will update this as I get an answer.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

0
ToxicApotheke•

Been following your work on the discord! Thanks for all the work you’ve put in! My opener is bursting around 13k due to the work of everyone in the balance discord!

12
KF-Sigurd:dnc2:•

There’s a dancer discord?

1
nonpuissant:tank2: Moogles ain't shit but poms and tricks•

I think they're referring to the Balance discord, which has a bunch of resources and channels for all the different classes in ffxiv.

Here's a link to it, if you're interested.

4
RexAtlantiBLM Furst Blumier•

Big fan of non-guide essays

8
SadwintertimeLucarius Cabbath•

Amazing write up - I've been back and forth between Devilment before or after Technical, but seeing some solid arguments here that I really like.

7
Rasikko:dnc2:Sininen Tanssija•

I was using it before as well, but TF takes 4s(6?) to finish, so that's 4s(6?) of devilment that is being wasted.

1
Sarahped:16bblm::blm2::16bblm:•

What an amazing job, i'm shocked!

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But I have one question, and i'm sorry if I miss it in the guide: What's the dps loss of not doing Standard Finish inside Tecstep/devilment buff window?

7
ElirooOPDPS•

The average loss depends on your GCD tier, but it is almost always a loss. Sometimes it is an acceptable loss though as there are a lot of factors that can push Standard Step out of your devilment windows. The first one in the opener is pretty much free though and should be taken advantage of.

5
Sarahped:16bblm::blm2::16bblm:•

Thank you, sir, <3

3
JupiterAdept89:dnc2:•

I am suddenly and strongly reminded I have no idea what I am doing, despite loving this class.

7
nillah:dnc2::plds::rdms:•

Same lol. All of this in-depth stuff always overwhelms me and makes me feel like I'm doing everything wrong.

4
The_InHuman•

You most likely are, the guide will start making sense once you get more familiar with the class. You'll start asking questions to yourself and documents like that answer them :)

3
innou•

Have you discovered if the partner buff stacks or not? i.e. two dancers pick each other as partners

2
ElirooOPDPS•

The Standard Finish and Esprit buff that the DNC gets themselves is unique to them while the ones they give to their partner is unique for their partner. So two DNCs can stack Standard Finish on each other and still generate Esprit.

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Technical Finish and Devilment will just overwrite over each other though. Meaning both DNCs will want to stagger them.

6
[deleted]•

Additionally, 2 dancers cannot stack buffs on the same partner

3
Rc2124:limsa:•

This is a great write-up and it's given me a lot to think about. However I think some portions could be written or explained more clearly. Sometimes it feels almost jargon-y, like it's copy-pasted straight from the middle of a theorycrafting discussion. Sometimes I had to reread a section multiple times to really absorb what was being said, such as during Im'hotep Rah's Flourish section.

I do have one question though. In the AoE Utilization section you talk about Single Target Cleave. Do our single target abilities secretly have a chance to do cone AoEs or am I misinterpreting things? Are you suggesting that you may want to kill larger mobs first since they throw out AoEs themselves?

2
ElirooOPDPS•

Lol yea, I do agree that some of the parts were pretty wordy, the part you mentioned was pretty much ripped from a conversation and formatted after the fact. I felt like I did my best without changing the meaning. As for the cleave thing, its referencing how the ST combo can produce feathers tha can be used for AoE same for Esprit. I will update that section later tonight to make that more clear as I can see that being confusing.

3
Rc2124:limsa:•

Thanks for responding! I thought it might have been about the chance to proc feathers but cleave has a different connotation to me. I'm not sure how I'd have worded it to keep it short for the spreadsheet though, haha

1
Serendipie:whm2:•

This is a truly amazing work, thanks for that :) I’m main WHM but I totally fell in love with DNC so it’s my off-class now. It’s the first time I’ve really put so much effort to optimize a dps job, learn a lot and do my best with it. The numbers part is a bit tricky for me to understand, but I’ll have everything you’ve wrote in mind!

2
getabsolutelyshrekt•

Thanks

2
supermerlion•

Thanks so much for this. Having been playing Dancer since the start of ShB, I immediately realized it was a lot more complicated than what people were making it out to be. There's a ton of on the fly decision making to be made and have been trying to make sense of all of it too.

Glad that someone already put in all the work. It feels like difficulty for this job really takes on a whole new level when you factor in the the mechanic timings for each fight.

Been really loving the job so far. Just wish Curing Waltz was more impactful or had a shorter cooldown.

2
CivilServantBotMOD•

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1
ffchampion123:nin2:•

The Espirit makes me so mad. We should be able to see how much it ticks up considering how when you use the lvl 80 skill it doesn't always go up by 10. I just want to know when I'll get my damn Espirit!

1
Hakul:afk:•

As much of a toxic cesspool that the balance tends to be most of the time, the work of guide makers and the few helpful people who answer questions is really appreciated.

1
Myna_Misora:azeyma:•

Probably the best place to ask this, but what is our melding priority? Just crit/dhit?

1
ElirooOPDPS•

We aren't sure of the exact priority but Crit and DHit are the higher priorities right now. Currently we are seeing some trends toward Direct Hit but as we get savage gear we think crit will take over. Hard to tell without seeing what gear options we have.

3
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
RumsteinUmbral Sky on Tonberry•

There are 2 things I wish for on DNC.

  1. Slightly faster recast if they buff DNC. 2.5s feels like a little too long and the character is static. Slightly higher would make it feel more fluid, and keep the character in motion/animated (a more "Dancer-like" visual)

  2. The ability to maintain Standard Finish on 2 targets. Closed Position can be rotated to different targets, and of course depending on cooldown timings it could actually be effectively rotated to different targets for max efficiency, but probably isn't. Maintaining on 2 would help bridge our lacking DPS as well.

-1
ThrashinuvaRabbit Ackerman•

The way dancer plays, 2.5s is ideal.

2
RumsteinUmbral Sky on Tonberry•

From what I've played, I feel it would be more fluid at 2. Less double weaving, but that's really the only time it feels so fluid right now.

-2
The_InHuman•

The class is built around double weaving in the Devilment Tactical Finish window. If you really feel like the gcd is too long just meld skill speed ;)

2
ThrashinuvaRabbit Ackerman•

With a solid 2 you would at least not clip gcd's, but both of your steps do more damage the less speed you have.

2
JordynSoundsLikeMe:dnc2:•

No matter how many times I read or have this "preferred opener" explained to me, experience has shown me that the Long Prepull opener is the best opener overall. You still get plenty of buff space for your party and you build more than enough resources to stay busy the whole while. And you refrain from spend 6.5s of your Devilment on setting up your Technical Dance. Plus with Saber Dance being RNG and high priority, you run the risk of being unable to finish all 4 GCDs within your Devilment timer. Its far riskier with 0 pay off in actuality because your putting a single attack in that 6.5s frame and hoping it gets a Crit/DH hit on it. There is a better chance of getting Crit/DH on your Saber Dances and Flourishes and Fan Dances, or even your 12 combo if your proccing does end up being meh as it is sometimes.

-2
ThrashinuvaRabbit Ackerman•

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with here.

3
Damnae•

Before reading this guide I had 0 interest in the class because of how simple it seemed to be. Now I have 0 interest because of how complex it seems to be.

-3
ElirooOPDPS•

Lol definitely not my intent. I think the base of DNC is pretty simple and intuitive but each and every job has some fun complexities about it.

8
JordynSoundsLikeMe:dnc2:•

What do you play then?

7
ThrashinuvaRabbit Ackerman•

It's very straightforward. It's basically using things off cool down, but saving your job gauge resources for during crucial buffs which you are using off cool down. There's just a few optimization factors to keep in mind, and that's it

2
Rasikko:dnc2:Sininen Tanssija•

Things always look complex in wording, but actually performing them is quite simple. Also practice makes perfect.

2